Microscopic Machines in the Human Body Scientists are busy building devices which are so small we can’t even see them with the naked eye. Recently scientists designed a motor, which was so tiny and only contained sixteen atoms and yet it functioned this was a breakthrough because previously no one can figure out how to make a motor the small rotate in the same direction. The motor is similar to all other motors in that it contains a stator and rotor. When I read the article, I thought to myself what could a motor this small possibly be used for? It turns out there may not be many uses for it yet since in order for it to work the temperature has to be brought down to 17° above absolute zero. Building the motor was more of an exercise than anything else and scientists hope in the future there will be able to harness the kinetic energy earth from the device even though it will be minute. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology decided to run tests to see how long microscopic parts can last. They wanted to know this because it would help in understanding how these parts work which in turn would also help in making better parts. They found that jostling parts which touch anywhere on 1 to 2 more surfaces could play a key role in the durability of the machines. Over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about developing microscopic robots which would travel through our blood streams and eat cancer cells. The hope is these can be developed and be smart enough to know when a cell is cancerous or not. You wouldn’t want a tiny robot to be eating you good cells, that is for sure. I don’t know about the rest of you out there, but the idea of little machines swimming in my blood is not a comforting one, even though they may be helpful. You have to wonder if any of these devices could have a malfunction or just turn on us and start eating everything. In 2001 an article came out stating Israeli scientists had built a computer so small you could fit 1000 billion of them in a single drop of water. If you’re wondering what were the components used to create the computers, wonder no more, they were built with DNA molecules. When they were built there was no application for them. It was hoped these computers could help in the delivery of medicine in the human body by figuring out the safest and most effective place to send the medicine to and how to get it there. The idea was to program a tiny machine like this to cure disease we get before we know we have it. These simple computing machines are known as finite automation. You can almost trace the progress as you learn more about these machines every year and they become more powerful. It seems to me it’s only a matter of time before humans will have microscopic helpers in their blood. Technology won’t stop at just installing microscopic devices, there are so many other things on the drawing board such as memory enhancement and fighting aging. As the years go by, the way these microscopic machines work keeps changing. In 2017 an article was published claiming the scientific community had managed to manufacture microscopic molecular drills which could cure cancer immediately. Scientists see the problem of curing cancer as being very tricky because the methods we have used such as radiation and chemotherapy don’t differentiate between healthy cells and cancerous ones. This is why so much work is going into nano machines which could solve this problem. The machines they are talking about are so small if you put 50,000 of them side-by-side they wouldn’t equal the width of a human hair. The idea is to get the diseased cells to absorb the tiny machines. Once that happens, they are activated by ultraviolet light and begin to burrow into cell linings destroying the cancer cells without harming nearby healthy cells. This year, 2020, it was announced scientists had built the first ever robots constructed entirely out of living cells. Stem cells from frogs were used and algorithms redesigned the cells into tiny robots. They were named xenobots. Each robot contains between 500 and 1,000 cells. They are able to transport microscopic payloads, and reorganize themselves in a petri dish. They are unique organisms. One scientist has said, "They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism." In 2009 scientists proudly announced they were able to complete the development of microscopic, chemically triggered robotic hands which can be used to pick up and move small objects. This seems to me to be one of the weirder announcements, perhaps it is because of calling the object “hands” is a little uncomfortable. They claim there is certainly a use for this in places like on-chip laboratories and reconfigurable microfluidic systems.
|
